Read Poems That Make Grown Men Cry Online

Authors: Anthony and Ben Holden

Poems That Make Grown Men Cry

POEMS
THAT MAKE
GROWN MEN
CRY

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014

A CBS COMPANY

Copyright © 2014 by Anthony Holden and Ben Holden

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

No reproduction without permission.

All rights reserved.

The right of Anthony Holden and Ben Holden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

1st Floor

222 Gray’s Inn Road

London WC1X 8HB

www.simonandschuster.co.uk

Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-47113-489-0

eBook ISBN: 978-1-47113-491-3

The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright-holders for permission, and apologise for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given.
Corrections may be made to future printings.

Interior design by Ruth Lee-Mui

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents

Preface by Anthony Holden and Ben Holden

‘Elegy’ by Chidiock Tichborne

DAVID MCVICAR

 Sonnet XXX by William Shakespeare

MELVYN BRAGG

‘On My First Son’ by Ben Jonson

JOHN CAREY

‘Amor constante más allá de la muerte’ by Francisco de Quevedo

ARIEL DORFMAN AND JAVIER MARÍAS

‘Hokku’ by Fukuda Chiyo-ni

BORIS AKUNIN

‘Wandrers Nachtlied II’ by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

JOHN LE CARRÉ

‘Frost at Midnight’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

SEBASTIAN FAULKS

‘Character of the Happy Warrior’ by William Wordsworth

HAROLD EVANS

‘Surprised by Joy’ by William Wordsworth

HOWARD JACOBSON

‘Last Sonnet’ by John Keats

KENNETH LONERGAN

 Extract from
The Masque of Anarchy
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

DAVID EDGAR

‘I Am’ by John Clare

KEN LOACH

‘Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances’ by Walt Whitman

STEPHEN FRY

‘Remember’ by Christina Rossetti

ROBERT FISK AND JULAIN FELLOWERS

‘After Great Pain’ by Emily Dickinson

DOUGLAS KENNEDY

 Extract from
Peer Gynt
by Henrik Ibsen

KENNETH BRANAGH

‘Requiem’ by Robert Louis Stevenson

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

‘The Remorseful Day’ by A. E. Housman

JOE KLEIN

‘The Wind, One Brilliant Day’ by Antonio Machado

ROBERT BLY

‘Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes’ by Rainer Maria Rilke

COLM TÓIBÍN

‘Ithaka’ by Constantine P. Cavafy

WALTER SALLES

‘At Castle Boterel’ by Thomas Hardy

ALAN HOLLINGHURST

‘The Voice’ by Thomas Hardy

SEAMUS HEANY

‘Adlestrop’ by Edward Thomas

SIMON WINCHESTER

‘The Soldier’ by Rupert Brooke

HUGH BONNEVILLE

‘During Wind and Rain’ by Thomas Hardy

KEN FOLLET

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

‘God’s World’ by Edna St. Vincent Millay

PATRICK STEWART

‘Everyone Sang’ by Siegfried Sassoon

BARRY HUMPHRIES

‘Last Poems: XL’ by A. E. Housman

ANDREW MOTION AND RICHARD
DAWKINS

‘God Wills It’ by Gabriela Mistral

JEREMY IRONS

‘Out of Work’ by Kenneth H. Ashley

FELIX DENNIS

‘All the Pretty Horses’ by Anonymous

CARL BERNSTEIN

‘The Cool Web’ by Robert Graves

JOHN SUTHERLAND

‘The Broken Tower’ by Hart Crane

HAROLD BLOOM

‘Bavarian Gentians’ by D. H. Lawrence

SIMON ARMITAGE

‘A Summer Night’ by W. H. Auden

WILLIAM BOYD

‘Those Who Are Near Me Do Not Know’ by Rabindranath Tagore

CHRIS COOPER

‘Let My Country Awake’ by Rabindranath Tagore

SALIL SHETTY AND DAVID PUTTNAM

 Extract from
Finnegans Wake
by James Joyce

JAMES MCMANUS

‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’ by W. H. Auden

SALMAN RUSHDIE

‘Lullaby’ by W. H. Auden

SIMON SCHAMA AND SIMON CALLOW

‘If I Could Tell You’ by W. H. Auden

ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

‘Canoe’ by Keith Douglas

CLIVE JAMES

‘My Papa’s Waltz’ by Theodore Roethke

STANLEY TUCCI

‘The Book Burnings’ by Bertolt Brecht

JACK MAPANJE

‘Liberté’ by Paul Éluard

JOE WRIGHT

 Extract from
The Pisan Cantos
by Ezra Pound

CRAIG RAINE

‘I see a girl dragged by the wrists’ by Philip Larkin

SIMON RUSSELL BEALE

‘The Mother’ by Gwendolyn Brooks

TERRANCE HAYES

‘The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner’ by Randall Jarrell

PAUL MULDOON

‘War Has Been Brought into Disrepute’ by Bertolt Brecht

DAVID HARE

‘Le Message’ by Jacques Prévert

PETER SÍS

‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas

BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH

‘Unfinished Poem’ by Philip Larkin

FRANK KERMODE

‘Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance’ by Elizabeth Bishop

JOHN ASHBERRY

‘End of Summer’ by Stanley Kunitz

NICHOLSON BAKER

‘The Horses’ by Edwin Muir

ALEXEI SAYLE

‘Friday’s Child’ by W. H. Auden

ROWAN WILLIAMS

‘Long Distance I and II’ by Tony Harrison

DANIEL RADCLIFF

‘The Widower in the Country’ by Les Murray

NICK CAVE

‘A Blessing’ by James Arlington Wright

RICHARD FORD

‘Injustice’ by Pablo Neruda

CARLOS REYES-MANZO

‘The Meaning of Africa’ by Abioseh Nicol

JAMES EARL JONES

‘Elegy for Alto’ by Christopher Okigbo

BEN OKRI

‘Requiem for the Croppies’ by Seamus Heaney

TERRY GEORGE

‘Gone Ladies’ by Christopher Logue

BRIAN PATTEN

‘Dream Song 90: Op. posth. no. 13’ by John Berryman

AL ALVAREZ

‘Essay’ by Hayden Carruth

JONATHAN FRANZEN

‘An Exequy’ by Peter Porter

IAN MCEWAN

‘Crusoe in England’ by Elizabeth Bishop

ANDREW SOLOMON

‘For Julia, in the Deep Water’ by John N. Morris

TOBIAS WOLFF

‘Aubade’ by Philip Larkin

WILLIAM SIEGHART

‘Dear Bryan Wynter’ by W. S. Graham

NICK LAIRD

‘A Meeting’ by Wendell Berry

COLUM MCCANN

‘eulogy to a hell of a dame –’ by Charles Bukowski

MIKE LEIGH

Midsummer
: ‘Sonnet XLIII’ by Derek Walcott

MARK HADDON

‘In Blackwater Woods’ by Mary Oliver

MARC FORSTER

‘Love After Love’ by Derek Walcott

TOM HIDDLESTON

 Extract from
and our faces, my heart, brief as photos
by John Berger

SIMON MCBURNEY

‘Sandra’s Mobile’ by Douglas Dunn

RICHARD EYRE

‘Brindis con el Viejo’ by Mauricio Rosencof

JUAN MÉNDEZ

‘An End or a Beginning’ by Bei Dao

WUER KAIXI

‘A Call’ by Seamus Heaney

RICHARD CURTIS

 Extract from ‘Eastern War Time’ by Adrienne Rich

ANISH KAPOOR

‘It Is Here (for A)’ by Harold Pinter

NEIL LABUTE

‘For Andrew Wood’ by James Fenton

DAVID REMNICK

‘Not Cancelled Yet’ by John Updike

JOSEPH O’NEILL

‘Armada’ by Brian Patten

PAUL BETTANY

‘A Poetry Reading at West Point’ by William Matthews

TOM MCCARTHY

‘Bedecked’ by Victoria Redel

BILLY COLLINS

‘The Lanyard’ by Billy Collins

J. J. ABRAMS

‘Regarding the home of one’s childhood, one could:’ by Emily Zinnemann

COLIN FIRTH

‘For Ruthie Rogers in Venice’ by Craig Raine

RICHARD ROGERS

‘Keys to the Doors’ by Robin Robertson

MOHSIN HAMID

 Afterword by Nadine Gordimer

 Acknowledgements

 Amnesty International

 Index of Contributors and Poets

 Index of Titles of Poems

 Index of First Lines

 Credits, Copyrights, and Permissions

Preface

ANTHONY HOLDEN

Late one afternoon in the mid-1990s a close friend of long standing called to tell me of a sudden domestic crisis. My wife and I went straight round to join him for the
evening, during which he began to quote a Thomas Hardy poem, ‘The Darkling Thrush’. Upon reaching what might be called the punch line – ‘Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew /
And I was unaware’
– our friend choked up, unable to get the words out. This was understandable: he was still upset by the day’s events. We ourselves were much moved.

That weekend we happened to be visiting the scholar and critic Frank Kermode. Frank knew the friend involved, and was also touched by his Hardy moment. ‘Is there any poem
you
can’t recite without choking up?’ I asked him. Never an emotionally
demonstrative man, Frank said immediately: ‘Go and get the Larkin.’

In front of his half-dozen guests he then began to read aloud ‘Unfinished Poem’, about death treading its remorseless way up the stairs, only to turn out to be a pretty young girl
with bare feet, moving the stunned narrator to exclaim: ‘What summer have you broken from?’ It was this startling last line that rendered Frank
speechless; with a forlorn waft of the
hand, he held the book out for someone else to finish the poem.

Also there that day was another professor of English, Tony Tanner, so it was not surprising that this topic of conversation lasted all afternoon, ranging far and wide, not just over other
candidates for this distinct brand of poetic immortality but the power of poetry over prose to move,
the difference between true sentiment and mere mawkishness, and, of course, the pros and cons of
men weeping, whether in private or in public.

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